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Thursday, 19 December 2013

In the first year of the Lorde, it was hard to
ignore her, especially living in New Zealand. Hard to ignore her as she became the first solo New Zealand artist to top the US
charts. Hard to ignore her as mass saturation of her every move, every lunch
she shared, every comment she made was news. Mention of her youth, her canny sense of
riding the wave of a backlash against capitalism. Everything she did was
acknowledged to the point where I was bored of Lorde. I tried to not like her
songs but Royals was something that I couldn’t shake so it made this list. Looking
down the list, I noticed that there were quite a few songs by artists who I
would describe as post-grunge-the likes of Coliseum and Roomrunner. Fitting in
that this year saw both the 20th anniversary reissue of In Utero and
Nirvana’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There’s also an
appearance by Pearl Jam, who released another pretty underwhelming album with
one decent in Mind Your Manners. Kanye West and Vampire
Weekend were the only two acts to have two songs to feature on the list. In
Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend made my year’s favourite album. I’ve
always been a Vampire Weekend fan-boy and I’ve been a bit bemused by some of
the backlash directed against them. Modern Vampires of the City doesn’t have
any immediate songs but it has a collection of great songs, signaling a more
mature but not more boring album. Yeesus by Kanye West has left me divided-I
like a number of songs on it but as a whole, I can’t say it’s a great album,
certainly not in the league of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye has
never been a great lyricist or even a great rapper but he does make interesting
compelling music. He might be impatient for croissants but he remains music’s
most vital artist